We have found countless fossils of dinosaurs with burnt out blutooth headsets and seen the patterns of chaos when said dinosaurs lost their nightly Fox news feed.
I kid. Doing some very light reading, apparently no evidence has been found that the Sun is the kind of star to produce a super flare, and the presence of one would probably be quite devastating (1000x sun luminosity baking the earth for a few hours with no ozone layer to protect us). Definitely not something that happens in the solar system every 10k years.
Forgiveness works with rational humans who function under ethics, but corporations in capitalism aren't that. Corporations are psychopaths working to figure out ways to take advantage of consumers. That is their modus operandi.
We aren't advocating not forgiving the company, we are advocating making an example of the company so that the other psychopaths see there are real, severe consequences to this kind of behavior.
Is that fair to GM? Maybe not, but neither is the rest of reality, and it is better for the rest of us that it is that way.
Hah, you though Americans made fun of the Brits because their teeth were unhealthy. How ignorant. No, Americans make fun of Brits because their teeth are ugly and obviously so.
we now know that if we see too much water it could be a sign that there an absence of life.
Except unless we saw a before/after picture that were billions of years apart, we'd have no idea what the 'baseline' amount of water was for a planet, and therefore would not have any idea how the amount of water at any point in time might relate to their being life or not.
Not always true. Sometimes, he loses the contract and it goes to someone else. Sometimes, he loses the ability to get awarded future contracts. Sometimes, he gets sued but he government to recover the money. It totally depends on the cause.
If a contractor overruns his budget because of unforeseen technical difficulties, that is one thing. They usually are on the cutting edge, so predicting that sort of thing is difficult. If they overrun their budget due to incompetence, that is entirely different.
As a multi-gun owner and concealed carry permit holder/user, I'd also like to chime in.
<quote>However, today, the reasons given (by the gun lobby) seem to be heavily oriented toward individual protection. </quote>
There is a good reason for this. Not only is the U.S. not going to be invaded by a traditional army, as you said, but trying to make that argument just gives cannon-fodder for the 'other side'.
The self-defense case, however, is well grounded and supported by the facts. It is well documented that the incidence of homicide by firearm (around 10,000 per year) is orders of magnitude less than the number of crimes prevented by the use of firearms (2,500,000 is the number commonly cited from the FBI's crime statistics, and in some statistics, up to 200,000 women protect themselves from attackers each year by using firearms).
You can go to almost any gun-board and find lots of people sympathetic to that reasoning, not because they are looking for an excuse to protect their gun collecting and shooting sports hobby, but because they themselves were part of that 2.5m statistic.
Within the last few months, my fiance fended off a home intruder using a firearm I had left with her. She didn't need to fire a single shot, but the peace of mind it afforded her was unquestionable.
But it is a complicated issue as well. Both sides are fighting from fear. Most firearm owners LOVE firearms. Just like people love motorcycles or fine watches. They are carefully crafted and finely crafted pieces of engineering. There is a huge body of maths and physics behind internal, external, and terminal ballistics that everyman can share in. One can build their own custom AR-15 just like one might a gaming computer. One can compete with fellow enthusiasts in international shooting competitions and with organizations covering the whole gambit of firearms. To us, it is unthinkable that someone might want to take that away, and we are terrified of that. I'd feel the same about my motorcycles or my dog (which, by the way, one is about 50x more likely to be attacked by a dog than to be harmed by a firearm).
On the other hand, lots of people have an irrational fear of firearms built by ignorance and portrayal in the media as being exclusively the tools of death. Or maybe some even have a rational fear of firearms, but it is hard to find an argument against firearms that isn't grounded in fear.
Two sides anchored in fear leads to some really nasty fighting that probably isn't healthy for a sane debate.
[quote]it's also subtly encouraged the paranoid belief of the tyranny of our existing government. I think this is illogical, but many today here don't.[/quote]
To be fair, given the Snowden/Manning leaks, the LEO drone usage controversy, the police brutality thing... it is hard not to be paranoid.
My biggest fear is that our society is devolving into one like Aus or the U.K. have which pass permanent and pretty severe rights-restricting laws as knee-jerk reactions to whatever moral-panic of the minute ends up being, whether it be guns, vehicles, first amendment issues, or porn.
I was reading a bit about the NYS SAFE Act which was railroaded through the NYS legislature, at midnight, using a special loophole to go against the NYS constitution to prevent it from being debated, and signed into law within half an hour after passing.
The idea that a group of politicians from one city in a state could circumvent the democratic process whenever it tickles their fancy... that terrifies me. No matter what the issue is.
DIY manufacturing ammo is way easier than firearms.
Bullets just require a mould, which anyone can buy or make, and some wheel weights, sailing weights, or lead from any number of sources, and a cheap gas furnace.
The problem with that idea is that it assumes that firearms are something that are uncommon or rare in the first place. Firearms are incredibly easy for anyone to produce with or without a 3D printer. A used drill press, lathe, or CNC costs the same as a good 3D printer. The scary black rifles like the AR-15 and AK-47s can partly be made with nothing more than a jig and a Dremel or a drill press.
But you are right in that it may be a good idea depending on the country. Australia doesn't have a multi billion dollar drug and contraband smuggling economy walking across its borders every year from Mexico.
"Sci-fi used to be about promising hopes, about what mankind can do getting to the stars. Take Star Trek, for example. It led the way into devices we take for granted."
No, Star Trek used to be about promising hopes. Sci-Fi in general has never had that theme. I mean, the year before Star Trek came out, Frank Herbert released the quintessential science fiction novel, Dune, which has the overarching theme that the only way humanity will survive in the long term (this is after they already almost annihilated themselves re the Butlerian Jihad) is by relying on a near god-like figure to enforce a form of anarcho-primitivism on the entire galaxy that humans have colonized.
The DNP has not always been liberal and the GOP has not always been conservative. Before the Southern Strategy politics of the 60s, the DNP was comprised of two factions, the Northern/Progressive Democrats and the Southern/States Rights/Conservative Democrats (KKK included). They had different political ideologies but similar goals. That is why we had weird tickets like the very liberal JFK running with the very racist and very conservative LBJ. After the Southern Strategy politics (by Richard Nixon and the GOP), the State's Rights faction abandoned the DNP for the GOP, and the GOP have had a clear political/ideological divide ever since. Just because Calhoun was in the DNP doesn't mean he was liberal.
Probably because he, like the rest of us, have no idea what that person was talking about. Maybe if they were more specific as to what they meant by "mass murder" and in what context (since it was obviously hyperbole), there would be something to address.
That claim is horse shit. The meaning of the word "homeopathy" implies its major tenant, which is that problems can be cured by diluting things that cause symptoms similar to what a person is experiencing. If it was preventative, then there would be no symptoms for the homeopathy to be paired with. Instead, homeopathy is NEVER preventative and is ALWAYS reactive. If your woo doctor says otherwise, it is because they are selling you bullshit for problems you don't even have.
It is largely a cultural thing as well. If you look at a ranking of countries by suicide rate, no country in the top 10 are guns easily and legally acquired. Some, like Japan and South Korea, gun ownership is nearly impossible.
But countries like the U.S. and Switzerland, having the highest gun ownership, rank 30 and 44 respectively.
A $1200 laptop has barely the same power as a $200 desktop. What is this, the year 2000?
This isn't news. This is just how laptops/desktops have always been.
Why would they do that when they can arbitrarily increase prices and hidden fees everywhere else? One of the advantages for them colluding and running an effective monopoly is they can do whatever and you either have to live with it or live without internet. It is the same reason the same companies charge $100/year to rent a $10 cable card.
Yea, you can literally buy a piece of plastic that just requires a Dremel to roughly hollow out, and from there build a complete AR-15 in less than an hour. No serial number, little to no knowhow, just a hammer, pin punches, a Dremel, and about $600.
3D printed guns are nothing more than moral panic bullshit. But so is gun-grabbing. Statistically speaking, there are few rational reasons to ban firearms, but this discussion is popular amongst people who have gun phobias.
You are 50x more likely to be sent to the hospital due to a dog attack than to be killed by a firearm. I know those two things are in no way equivalent, but I have never heard someone suggest banning dogs, despite the greater frequency of harm.
The reason why the largest demographic (by a large margin) for the victims of the 11,000 or so gun deaths unrelated to suicide each year are young black men, and the highest proportion of those deaths (also by a large margin) are from handguns, is largely due to the reason why that same demographic is the highest (by a large margin) in prison. The drug economy.
But no, let's discuss banning "scary" looking guns like AKs and ARs, despite these being the most popular rifles in the U.S. while simultaneously their use in homicide and crime is almost unheard of (except for the black swan mass (10-30) shootings that happen with them once every decade or so).
You gave a "list price" of $15 for a product that, for all you know (and given medicine pricing, like does) costs $0.10 to produce, and your issue is the $0.35 tax?
It does apply to desktops, but there are several significant differences... like:
1. Desktop users have control of over ways to manage heat that they can't with laptops
2. If a desktop user fries their graphics card, they only have to replace their graphics card. In comparison, integrated graphics cards are permanently attached to the motherboard which typically also has a BGA processor soldered on. That is three components needing to be swapped out if the user screws up the graphics card from using a feature that has no use case.
3. User built desktops typically used for over clocking don't have warranties
About two thirds of all firearms owned in the U.S. can easily defeat body armor. The other 1/3rd are handguns which require special ammo (which can be made at home by anybody), and body armor doesn't protect one's face, arms/legs (or the arteries inside), or sometimes the stomach/groin area.
Slashdot Mirror
We have found countless fossils of dinosaurs with burnt out blutooth headsets and seen the patterns of chaos when said dinosaurs lost their nightly Fox news feed.
I kid. Doing some very light reading, apparently no evidence has been found that the Sun is the kind of star to produce a super flare, and the presence of one would probably be quite devastating (1000x sun luminosity baking the earth for a few hours with no ozone layer to protect us). Definitely not something that happens in the solar system every 10k years.
Forgiveness works with rational humans who function under ethics, but corporations in capitalism aren't that. Corporations are psychopaths working to figure out ways to take advantage of consumers. That is their modus operandi.
We aren't advocating not forgiving the company, we are advocating making an example of the company so that the other psychopaths see there are real, severe consequences to this kind of behavior.
Is that fair to GM? Maybe not, but neither is the rest of reality, and it is better for the rest of us that it is that way.
Which is a concern, except the imagine isn't pornography. It is a picture of the face of a woman wearing a hat.
Hah, you though Americans made fun of the Brits because their teeth were unhealthy. How ignorant. No, Americans make fun of Brits because their teeth are ugly and obviously so.
Just one of my computers running F@H draws 12kWh/day.
This is the Flying Spaghetti Monster's retribution for Americans owning firearms.
Or Cthulhu is angry at Christians.
we now know that if we see too much water it could be a sign that there an absence of life.
Except unless we saw a before/after picture that were billions of years apart, we'd have no idea what the 'baseline' amount of water was for a planet, and therefore would not have any idea how the amount of water at any point in time might relate to their being life or not.
"and the result is that he gets a bigger budget"
Not always true. Sometimes, he loses the contract and it goes to someone else. Sometimes, he loses the ability to get awarded future contracts. Sometimes, he gets sued but he government to recover the money. It totally depends on the cause.
If a contractor overruns his budget because of unforeseen technical difficulties, that is one thing. They usually are on the cutting edge, so predicting that sort of thing is difficult. If they overrun their budget due to incompetence, that is entirely different.
Nothing is possible unless proven to be possible
vs
Anything is possible unless proven to be impossible.
As a multi-gun owner and concealed carry permit holder/user, I'd also like to chime in.
<quote>However, today, the reasons given (by the gun lobby) seem to be heavily oriented toward individual protection. </quote>
There is a good reason for this. Not only is the U.S. not going to be invaded by a traditional army, as you said, but trying to make that argument just gives cannon-fodder for the 'other side'.
The self-defense case, however, is well grounded and supported by the facts. It is well documented that the incidence of homicide by firearm (around 10,000 per year) is orders of magnitude less than the number of crimes prevented by the use of firearms (2,500,000 is the number commonly cited from the FBI's crime statistics, and in some statistics, up to 200,000 women protect themselves from attackers each year by using firearms).
You can go to almost any gun-board and find lots of people sympathetic to that reasoning, not because they are looking for an excuse to protect their gun collecting and shooting sports hobby, but because they themselves were part of that 2.5m statistic.
Within the last few months, my fiance fended off a home intruder using a firearm I had left with her. She didn't need to fire a single shot, but the peace of mind it afforded her was unquestionable.
But it is a complicated issue as well. Both sides are fighting from fear. Most firearm owners LOVE firearms. Just like people love motorcycles or fine watches. They are carefully crafted and finely crafted pieces of engineering. There is a huge body of maths and physics behind internal, external, and terminal ballistics that everyman can share in. One can build their own custom AR-15 just like one might a gaming computer. One can compete with fellow enthusiasts in international shooting competitions and with organizations covering the whole gambit of firearms. To us, it is unthinkable that someone might want to take that away, and we are terrified of that. I'd feel the same about my motorcycles or my dog (which, by the way, one is about 50x more likely to be attacked by a dog than to be harmed by a firearm).
On the other hand, lots of people have an irrational fear of firearms built by ignorance and portrayal in the media as being exclusively the tools of death. Or maybe some even have a rational fear of firearms, but it is hard to find an argument against firearms that isn't grounded in fear.
Two sides anchored in fear leads to some really nasty fighting that probably isn't healthy for a sane debate.
[quote]it's also subtly encouraged the paranoid belief of the tyranny of our existing government. I think this is illogical, but many today here don't.[/quote]
To be fair, given the Snowden/Manning leaks, the LEO drone usage controversy, the police brutality thing... it is hard not to be paranoid.
My biggest fear is that our society is devolving into one like Aus or the U.K. have which pass permanent and pretty severe rights-restricting laws as knee-jerk reactions to whatever moral-panic of the minute ends up being, whether it be guns, vehicles, first amendment issues, or porn.
I was reading a bit about the NYS SAFE Act which was railroaded through the NYS legislature, at midnight, using a special loophole to go against the NYS constitution to prevent it from being debated, and signed into law within half an hour after passing.
The idea that a group of politicians from one city in a state could circumvent the democratic process whenever it tickles their fancy... that terrifies me. No matter what the issue is.
There aren't enough 3D printed weapons to pay any attention to the issue either.
This is more of Australia's moral panic/kneejerk policymaking in action.
DIY manufacturing ammo is way easier than firearms.
Bullets just require a mould, which anyone can buy or make, and some wheel weights, sailing weights, or lead from any number of sources, and a cheap gas furnace.
The problem with that idea is that it assumes that firearms are something that are uncommon or rare in the first place. Firearms are incredibly easy for anyone to produce with or without a 3D printer. A used drill press, lathe, or CNC costs the same as a good 3D printer. The scary black rifles like the AR-15 and AK-47s can partly be made with nothing more than a jig and a Dremel or a drill press.
But you are right in that it may be a good idea depending on the country. Australia doesn't have a multi billion dollar drug and contraband smuggling economy walking across its borders every year from Mexico.
"Sci-fi used to be about promising hopes, about what mankind can do getting to the stars. Take Star Trek, for example. It led the way into devices we take for granted."
No, Star Trek used to be about promising hopes. Sci-Fi in general has never had that theme. I mean, the year before Star Trek came out, Frank Herbert released the quintessential science fiction novel, Dune, which has the overarching theme that the only way humanity will survive in the long term (this is after they already almost annihilated themselves re the Butlerian Jihad) is by relying on a near god-like figure to enforce a form of anarcho-primitivism on the entire galaxy that humans have colonized.
If that isn't bleak, I don't know what is.
Perhaps you should move to North Korea.
The DNP has not always been liberal and the GOP has not always been conservative. Before the Southern Strategy politics of the 60s, the DNP was comprised of two factions, the Northern/Progressive Democrats and the Southern/States Rights/Conservative Democrats (KKK included). They had different political ideologies but similar goals. That is why we had weird tickets like the very liberal JFK running with the very racist and very conservative LBJ. After the Southern Strategy politics (by Richard Nixon and the GOP), the State's Rights faction abandoned the DNP for the GOP, and the GOP have had a clear political/ideological divide ever since. Just because Calhoun was in the DNP doesn't mean he was liberal.
Probably because he, like the rest of us, have no idea what that person was talking about. Maybe if they were more specific as to what they meant by "mass murder" and in what context (since it was obviously hyperbole), there would be something to address.
That claim is horse shit. The meaning of the word "homeopathy" implies its major tenant, which is that problems can be cured by diluting things that cause symptoms similar to what a person is experiencing. If it was preventative, then there would be no symptoms for the homeopathy to be paired with. Instead, homeopathy is NEVER preventative and is ALWAYS reactive. If your woo doctor says otherwise, it is because they are selling you bullshit for problems you don't even have.
It is largely a cultural thing as well. If you look at a ranking of countries by suicide rate, no country in the top 10 are guns easily and legally acquired. Some, like Japan and South Korea, gun ownership is nearly impossible. But countries like the U.S. and Switzerland, having the highest gun ownership, rank 30 and 44 respectively.
A $1200 laptop has barely the same power as a $200 desktop. What is this, the year 2000? This isn't news. This is just how laptops/desktops have always been.
Why would they do that when they can arbitrarily increase prices and hidden fees everywhere else? One of the advantages for them colluding and running an effective monopoly is they can do whatever and you either have to live with it or live without internet. It is the same reason the same companies charge $100/year to rent a $10 cable card.
Yea, you can literally buy a piece of plastic that just requires a Dremel to roughly hollow out, and from there build a complete AR-15 in less than an hour. No serial number, little to no knowhow, just a hammer, pin punches, a Dremel, and about $600. 3D printed guns are nothing more than moral panic bullshit. But so is gun-grabbing. Statistically speaking, there are few rational reasons to ban firearms, but this discussion is popular amongst people who have gun phobias. You are 50x more likely to be sent to the hospital due to a dog attack than to be killed by a firearm. I know those two things are in no way equivalent, but I have never heard someone suggest banning dogs, despite the greater frequency of harm. The reason why the largest demographic (by a large margin) for the victims of the 11,000 or so gun deaths unrelated to suicide each year are young black men, and the highest proportion of those deaths (also by a large margin) are from handguns, is largely due to the reason why that same demographic is the highest (by a large margin) in prison. The drug economy. But no, let's discuss banning "scary" looking guns like AKs and ARs, despite these being the most popular rifles in the U.S. while simultaneously their use in homicide and crime is almost unheard of (except for the black swan mass (10-30) shootings that happen with them once every decade or so).
You gave a "list price" of $15 for a product that, for all you know (and given medicine pricing, like does) costs $0.10 to produce, and your issue is the $0.35 tax?
It does apply to desktops, but there are several significant differences... like: 1. Desktop users have control of over ways to manage heat that they can't with laptops 2. If a desktop user fries their graphics card, they only have to replace their graphics card. In comparison, integrated graphics cards are permanently attached to the motherboard which typically also has a BGA processor soldered on. That is three components needing to be swapped out if the user screws up the graphics card from using a feature that has no use case. 3. User built desktops typically used for over clocking don't have warranties
About two thirds of all firearms owned in the U.S. can easily defeat body armor. The other 1/3rd are handguns which require special ammo (which can be made at home by anybody), and body armor doesn't protect one's face, arms/legs (or the arteries inside), or sometimes the stomach/groin area.